From the beginning, Obama, and those around him, knew that he was ineligible for the presidency as proven by a paper written by an associate attorney in a Chicago-based firm whose partner served on the finance committee for then Sen. Barack Obama. In the paper, Sarah P. Herlihy, advocated for the elimination of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a president is be a "natural-born" citizen, calling the requirement "stupid" and asserting it discriminates, is outdated and undemocratic.

The paper, "Amending the Natural Born Citizen Requirement, "is dated February 22, 2006, just two years after Obama was sworn in to the U.S. Senate. Herlihy is listed as an associate at the Chicago firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Kirkland, through its employees, was a top 20 contributor to Barack Obama in 2008. A partner in the same firm, Bruce I. Ettelson, cites his membership on the Sen. Obama and Sen. Richard Durbin finance committees on the corporate website.

Herlihy’s essay presents a "Globalist" perspective and was widely disseminated on the internet during the 2008 presidential campaign as rumors surfaced that Obama and possibly McCain did not meet the "natural born" citizen requirement laid out in Article II, Section 1, paragraph 5, of the U.S. Constitution.
The article’s opening assertion is that several "constitutional scholars" considered Article II, Section 1, paragraph 5 "blatantly discriminatory" and "the stupidest provision" of the U.S. Constitution. Herlihy argues that the "natural born Citizen" clause should be "amended," although she also uses the word "repealed" (2). A constitutional provision is not "repealed;" it is changed by a constitutional amendment requiring approval by two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures.

In the same paragraph, Herlihy writes, "Although some of the reasons for maintaining the natural born citizen requirement are rational, many of the reasons are based primarily on emotion" (3). However, she fails to describe what those latter "reasons" are, their origin, nor her claim of their basis in "emotion." Rather, she maintains that "globalization" and the fact that several prominent politicians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madeleine Albright cannot serve as president due to their foreign births were reasons to amend the Constitution (4). On the following page, the author contends that "abolishing the natural born citizen requirement" is "more necessary than ever," using the word "abolishing" twice in the same sentence (5).

So in barely two pages, Ms. Herlihy calls the "natural born" requirement "outdated and undemocratic" and claims that it "incorrectly assumes that birthplace is a proxy for loyalty" while citing no cogent examples to support her statements. No other instances of countries with foreign-born rulers or presidents are provided. She also uses the terms "democratic," "undemocratic," and "democracy" throughout the 26-page essay (6) to describe our form of government, never once acknowledging that the Framers established "a Republic," not a democracy. The inaccuracies, repetitions and circular arguments presented in the paper reveal either a high degree of ignorance of how our government is supposed to work or an outright plan to subvert the same.

Herlihy goes so far as to compare the natural born Citizen clause to a social issue such as abortion when she states: "In a country divided by race, religion, abortion, and countless other issues, an unjustifiable distinction based on a person’s place of birth merely contributes to the internal divisions that already pervade America" (12). One of the sources used to bolster her arguments on this page is an editorial entitled "A More Perfect Democracy: Why Not a Naturalized Citizen for President?" from the Dallas Morning News (13). Another citation is from Wikipedia (14).

The author also makes a statement which has resurfaced repeatedly since the 2008 presidential election: "It is an unfortunate truth that many Americans are racist" (15). Now why did she mention that? Could it have been that her candidate of choice for the next presidential election was a different race from past presidents? She then paints the picture of exactly how Obama and his operatives ran his campaign: "…black candidates rarely generate enough votes to be elected, and researchers believe that this is primarily because white voters are reluctant to vote for a black candidate. This reluctance…may cause voters to oppose amending the natural born citizen clause because they fear that this is a first step toward having someone who is not white occupying the White House" (16). Astoundingly, Ms. Herlihy goes on to say, "Although it is doubtful today that Americans would have much to say if a Catholic was running for President, religion would likely be a central issue if a Muslim were to run for the highest office in America" (17).

The race card was played continuously throughout Obama’s campaign, as anyone who opposed him was automatically labeled a racist. Even worse, Obama’s ties to Islam were obscured and dismissed by a complicit media, and Obama himself lied about his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Trinity United Church of Christ, and that organization’s own belief in Black Liberation Theology, which is based on Marxism and has strong ties to Islam.

Written in 2006, how could Herlihy’s statements possibly be a coincidence? How could she have known that someone "not white," with a foreign background and ties to countries and a religion which had perpetrated the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, might run for president? Why did she mention "Muslim" in her paper? Why not Hindu, or atheist, or Seventh-Day Adventist?

Herlihy cites a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll taken in November 2004 in which "only 31% of the respondents favored a constitutional amendment to abolish the natural born citizen requirement while 67% opposed such an amendment" (17). While the poll is presumed accurate, Ms. Herlihy did apparently not investigate the respondents’ reasons for their opinions, so it is impossible to judge whether or not those reasons were "based on emotion."

Another unsupported claim is "For a provision that excludes millions of Americans from having the opportunity to become the next American president, the natural born citizen requirement was added to the Constitution with surprisingly little fanfare" (18). Herlihy does not rationally mention, however, that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the entire country did not contain "millions of Americans." She completely omits the fact that at that time, the colonies consisted of a few hundred thousand people, and the Founding Fathers could never have known the extent and breadth to which the United States of America would grow.

Herlihy practically predicts the situation in which we now find ourselves: "…considering that the Founding Fathers presumably included the natural born citizen clause in the Constitution partly out of fear of foreign subversion, the current stability of the American government and the intense media scrutiny of presidential candidates virtually eliminates the possibility of a "foreigner" coming to America, becoming a naturalized citizen, generating enough public support to become president, and somehow using the presidency to directly benefit his homeland" (19). Her argument makes no sense because earlier in the essay, she advocates exactly that scenario in the name of non-discrimination. She states at the outset that naturalized citizens should be able to become president, so why is she now saying that the above scenario is almost impossible?

Is it really a coincidence that the author of this article now works for a firm with ties to Barack H. Obama?

Herlihy’s examples of what makes a "good American" show an astounding lack of maturity in her writing. On page 283, her example of what a "loyal" American might be is exemplified by Tom Hanks, and she suggests that many people might find Martin Sheen "un-American or disloyal because of his political views" (20). Then she states that both are "natural born Americans" to make her argument that even though both were born on American soil, one might be considered a bad candidate for president. However, she fails to mention any of the qualities that would actually be possessed by a "good" president: honesty, integrity, and sole allegiance to the United States of America.

On page 284, the author refers to the United States as "a representative democracy, where American voters vote for the candidate that they choose. Currently, Americans cannot do that" (21). In other words, no eligibility criteria should exist in this author’s mind. Susan Bysiewicz, attempting to usurp the office of the Connecticut Attorney General, feels the same way.

It seems evident from this lengthy, poorly-written, reiterative piece that the author was making an effort to convince her audience that Article II, Section 1, paragraph 5 should be changed. The reasons she cites as compelling are constitutionally unsound and clearly seek to undermine United States sovereignty.

A Portent of Things to Come?

More seriously, Herlihy’s paper might be evidence of the conspiracy that placed Obama in the White House without the "intense public scrutiny" to which she frequently refers. On page 289, under the subheading "Fear of Foreigners," she states, and this is chilling:

Although people arguing against a Constitutional amendment do not typically admit that they oppose abolishing the natural born citizen requirement because they are afraid that a naturalized citizen might actually be working for a foreign government, the fear of foreigners amongst Americans has increased in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Similar to the fears that the Founding Fathers felt and the fear that John Jay mentioned in his letter to George Washington, the possibility that a foreigner will come in and somehow "take over" America continues to exist in America, albeit in a slightly different form. Although it seems unlikely and has even been called ludicrous that a foreign power would conspire to place someone with foreign allegiances in the White House, some Americans more legitimately fear that a naturalized citizen will somehow try to change America by promoting his own culture to the exclusion of others" (22).

Without having surveyed Americans herself, how could Herlihy have presupposed these things? How could she have known that Americans were "afraid" of a foreigner usurping the presidency at that time? Had it really been on anyone’s mind before the 2008 election? Her circular argument about why foreigners should not be trusted with the presidency comes full circle when she illogically states, "the truth is that many people simply distrust foreigners."

Since the essay contains very little factual information, it can only be concluded that its purpose was to float the idea of a foreign-born president to gauge the public’s reaction. The scenario of a "foreign power" commandeering a presidential election was not on most people’s minds in 2006. How, then, did Herlihy ever come up with this idea?

Forensic Inquiry Necessary

If one uses the simple inferential rule of forensic investigations, namely, that hoodlums never fear but what they believe to be the truth, Herlihy’s "fears" in 2006 and her connections to Obama through her law firm would tend to give credence to the inference that Obama’s colleagues in law believed in 2006 that he was a foreigner and thus ineligible to be president, or at least that he’d be seen as such if he ran. Given that Obama is a British citizen, that is understandable; seeing that it appears he and his co-grandmother claimed he was born in Mombassa, Kenya, that might have more to do with it. Obama has still refused to answer Congressman Nathan Deal’s request for his birth certificate and other documentation requested in early December 2009, and there remains much evidence that Obama is a foreign national.

The Post & Email covered the foreign influences of George Soros on the Obama campaign in detail here. Also having covered the resurgence of the Students for a Democratic Society in a recent article, it is interesting to note that none other than Barack Obama was a speaker at the second annual conference of "Campus Progress," the "modern-day equivalent" of the SDS, whose foreign communist influences were well-documented.

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Footnotes:

(1) "Amending the Natural Born Citizen Requirement: Globalization as the Impetus and the Obstacle" by Sarah P. Herlihy, The Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 81:275, Feb. 22, 2006, p. 275.